Creativity in Business

Creativity in Business

by Piero Formica, Dean, International Faculty Economics of Entrepreneurship

Marie Curie Professor of International Business, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu

Special International Professor of Knowledge Economics and Entrepreneurship, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Creativity in business has to do with the generation of new ideas that are converted into economic activity. Therefore, creative thinking needs to be supported by a strong culture of commercialisation. Once a new thought has been developed, it must be validated, then a prototype offering has to be created, the competitive environment assessed, the offering tested, feedback used to refine the offering, a business plan tightly constructed and executed when the new entrepreneur is ready to seek outside investors.

The paper refers to the process by which three famed entrepreneurs – Sony’s Akio Morita, Ferrari’s Enzo Ferrari, and Luxottica’s Lorenzo del Vecchio – made difference in their entrepreneurial vibrancy compared to others by exploring creativity in business under three perspectives: creativity in technology, creativity in product planning, and creativity in marketing.

1. Akio Morita: the ‘outside the box’ thinker

S [Science] does not equal T [Technology] and T does not equal I [Innovation].

This is the title of a famous lecture by Akio Morita, Sony’s founder, at the Royal Society in London, in 1992.

From his perspective, “just having innovative technology is not enough to claim true innovation”. True innovation is made up of three key elements which Morita call the “three creativities”:

i. Creativity in technology

ii. Creativity in product planning

iii. Creativity in marketing

Creativity is a combination of already existing elements.

Contrary to the...